closed upon them, he waited for about a second, and
then called out in a loud voice to the coachman: "To the house of the
minister, by the private entrance!" The horses started at a gallop.

CHAPTER XLIII. A FALSE FRIEND.

Night had set in dark and cold. The sky, which had been clear till the
sun went down, was now covered with gray and lurid clouds; a strong wind
raised here and there, in circling eddies, the snow that was beginning
to fall thick and fast.

The lamps threw a dubious light into the interior of Dr. Baleinier's
carriage, in which he was seated alone with Adrienne de Cardoville.
The charming countenance of the latter, faintly illumined by the lamps
beneath the shade of her little gray hat, looked doubly white and pure
in contrast with the dark lining of the carriage, which was now filled
with that, sweet, delicious, and almost voluptuous perfume which hangs
about the garments of young women of taste. The attitude of the girl,
seated next to the doctor, was full of grace. Her slight and elegant
figure, imprisoned in her high-necked dress of blue cloth, imprinted its
wavy outline on the soft cushion against which she leaned; her little
feet, crossed one upon the other, and stretched rather forward, rested
upon a thick bear-skin, which carpeted the bottom of the carriage.
In her hand, which was ungloved and dazzlingly white, she held a
magnificently embroidered handkerchief, with which, to the great
astonishment of M. Baleinier, she dried her eyes, now filled with tears.

Yes; Adrienne wept, for she now felt the reaction from the painful
scenes through which she had passed at Saint-Dizier House; to the
feverish and nervous excitement, which had till then sustained her, had
succeeded a sorrowful dejection. Resolute in her independence, proud
in her disdain, implacable in her irony, audacious in her resistance
to unjust oppression, Adrienne was yet endowed with the most acute
sensibility, which she always dissembled, however, in the presence of
her aunt and those who surrounded her.

Notwithstanding her courage, no one could have been less masculine, less
of a virago, than Mdlle. Cardoville. She was essentially womanly, but as
a woman, she knew how to exercise great empire over herself, the moment
that the least mark of weakness on her part would have rejoiced or
emboldened her enemies.

The carriage had rolled onwards for some minutes; but Adrienne, drying
her tears in silence, to the doctor's gre